


The One Dear Face

by a_big_apple



Series: The City Holds Together [12]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Children, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-04
Updated: 2010-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-09 03:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7784797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_big_apple/pseuds/a_big_apple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for fma_fic_contest prompt 80: Billow.</p>
<p>Trisha was a surprise in every way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Dear Face

_Once come and gone, the one dear face, / Forever empty is its place; / But one far voice the lover hears, / Calling across the waste of years. –John Vance Cheney, “One”_

  
  
Trisha was a surprise in nearly every way. A surprise when the kids were staying with Uncle Roy in Central for a week, when toward the end of Ed and Winry’s sexual tour of every flat surface in the house, the condom gave way with a heartfelt _snap!_ A surprise when Winry, who’d thought her thirteen-year-old son and twelve-year-old daughter were quite enough joy and aggravation in her life, started feeling sick in the mornings, and then the evenings, and then just about every time of day.   
  
A surprise when she tried so hard to meet the world early, kept Winry confined to her bed, weak and sick and driving Edward mad with worry, and finally had her way two months too soon.   
  
A surprise when she arrived, a dusting of chestnut hair on her head, dark grey-blue eyes that couldn’t quite focus, but seemed to look at Ed from across a span of decades. They hadn’t had time to talk about names, but as soon as she opened those eyes, Ed knew what to call her.   
  
A surprise that she was so strong, so perfect, the way she gripped the offered fingers of her proud mother and enchanted father, her curious siblings, her Uncle Al fresh back from Xing. So vitally and powerfully alive that when she left the incubator and crossed the threshold of her home, the house seemed suddenly filled with her presence, too large to be contained inside her skin.   
  
She was small enough for him to cradle in just one hand; he always used the left. Though the right had caught up years ago, he still sometimes felt like it was hard and cold and too strong for such a delicate skull, delicate bird-bones, and the rest of the time felt like it was still too weak to carry such a precious burden. So he kept her close to his chest in his left hand, barely let her go; Winry was still weak and ill, and had no milk to give her, so Ed made bottles and sat and rocked her and hummed little songs that he made up as he went.   
  
It was a surprise to no-one that she was always hungry—she was an Elric, after all—and as Ed held her bottle, watched her gulp her dinner down, he remembered the look of tender bliss on Winry’s face as she held Urey and then Nina to her breast. Then slowly, faded like a photograph too much in the sun—his mother, rocking, humming, an infant Alphonse nestled close beneath her green house shawl. He considered this as Trisha waved her tiny hands and kicked his chest with tiny feet, seeking more and more, wriggling with want even as she sucked.   
  
So it was quite a surprise, and yet not at all, when Winry found her husband shirtless in the dim-lit bedroom, strapped into her old nursing bra with bags of formula stuffed into the cups, hypnotized by his daughter’s strong mouth and her hand laid lightly on his makeshift breast, five perfect fingers with five perfect fingernails seeking his warmth. He didn’t even hear her intake of breath, her stifled chuckle, the door clicking closed as she shuffled back to the kitchen to see about lunch.


End file.
